About me

I have lived in Japan for 37 years and currently live with my husband and 5 cats. My two children are living and working in the States. I have been a quilter for over 20 years but I am semi-retired and teach English occasionally. I love the Bible and Jesus and try to serve as I can to His glory

Quilting profile

I'm a self-taught quilter who for the past 20 years has progressed through trial and error mostly using Japanese books. I belong to a small group of quilters and we yearly make a bazaar quilt but on my own I dabble in hand piecing and strip piecing and hand quilting. Since joining the blogging world I've enjoyed Wonky piecing and am trying to get a handle on machine quilting using a domestic machine.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Paper

Yesterday I spent about 6 hours cleaning my mother's house. We've decided that if we are going to ask someone to come in and stay with Grandma for some hours every week that her house really needs to be made livable. The first job is just getting rid of all the paper she had around and she had a lot!!!

My mother was an elementary school teacher for 24 years. Let me tell you. I think I found tests and worksheets and book reports from the 1970's! (Not to mention old textbooks, graph and construction paper and art supplies.)

After her years of teaching my mother settled into being the church stenographer for various church meetings. She attended meetings and took notes in shorthand (she's the only one who can read her notebooks) then typed up all the minutes and THEN made copies of all the minutes for her own files. Can you even imagine all the notebooks filled with reams of papers stacked in the corners of her room?

Then we have bank receipts and insurance company invoices and doctors' bills. Those alone overworked the shredder until it no longer works...

Cards. And cards, and CARDS. Both received and new. She has saved all Mother's Day cards, Christmas cards, Thank you cards, Valentine's Day cards, Easter cards and Get well cards (actually we've only just started collecting those this month). Then there are the cards that come "free" in the mail from the tens of organizations that she sent money to regularly "because they went to all the trouble to send me the cards." And a whole box of calendars (found one from 1995) from the same organizations.

Then we have a different type of paper called PHOTOS. Okay. People take photos. But photos of roses, and trees, and shrubs and flower arrangements. Photos of school children and church members but no names and no dates on them. Some of the children probably already have children themselves! And all these in duplicate!!!

Other paper includes 25 years worth of weekly letters from me and 25 years of COPIES of my mother's letter TO me. More notebooks lining the bookcases and paper bags stuffed with all the airmail envelopes with my Japanese adventures stuffed inside.

So we killed the shredder but I saved the letters (also letters from MY grandmother to my mother.) I feel guilty doing this knowing how my mother has surrounded herself in things she's loved and treasured. But she doesn't look at them anymore. She doesn't know what is there or isn't there. Still I feel that I'm doing things that should wait until after she's gone...

And I even get into philosophizing about what is the point of all this writing and keeping and hanging on to the past. I'm as guilty as my mother is with all my blog writing and recording the events of my life that just builds up one post after another. And digital pictures!!! And blog books (I just ordered another one too!)

Is it an older generation thing, or an age thing? My mother was the same, and after she died I had masses of things to go through. I found all my school reports and boxes full of slides that couldn't be identified. I kept anything that is part of our family history and ditched everything else. I sometimes worry though that our family history is going to stop here, with no letters any more, and everything going digital - we seem to keep so many records of things with blogs and digital photography, but how much of it will be left behind for our descendants?

I went through this last year with my MIL and believe me that every little bit of cleaning, sorting and shredding that you do now will help in the future.Don't feel guilty...you are helping her to get more organized!

I collect paper too - it is just a lot of work to process it / the sorting, the filing, the decision making, the throwing away. I do try to keep it to a manageable level, but it really isn't yet. I keep telling myself that if I take care of it, then my survivors will know what the important stuff is, but it is a long process.

Oh, I think the personal things are the most important things that can and must be saved. I have been working on family history and the bits of paper they saved means so much to me now. I wish I had some from the other branches of my family.

I am in the process of scanning old family photos into the computer. I never knew why I love hollyhocks until I came across a photo of my ggrandmother standing in her garden of hollyhocks. In your mother's photos are reasons why the future generations will come to love some things and wonder why. The answers lie in those photos.

Your grandmother's letters to your Mom should be kept so that future generations can read and know just a little bit about that generation. Perhaps just choose the important letters for keeping.

Genealogy is important and your Mom letters, photos, etc. is a good starting point to assemble a very interesting family scrapbooking journal.

Please, look at your Mom's things in another way instead of just a lot of paper.